Environmental losses cannot be paid back

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Failure to make rapid and radical changes on global warming would
put our civilisation at stake, writes Ian Lowe.

The evidence is clear. If civilisation is to survive, the next
century will have to be a time of transformation, not just in
technological capacity but also in our approach to the natural
world, and to each other. A sustainable society would not be
eroding its resource base, causing serious environmental damage or
producing unacceptable social problems. Our present lifestyle,
however, does not satisfy any of those criteria. We are dissipating
resources that future generations will need, damaging environmental
systems and reducing social stability by widening the gap between
rich and poor.

First, we must recognise the injustice done by our forebears to
the indigenous people of Australia. Their land was acquired by
robbery with violence, their lifestyles and cultures systematically
destroyed, and their living conditions today shame us as a
civilised nation. We cannot restore what we have taken, but we must
acknowledge our debt.

A sustainable society will not erode its resource base. Our most
serious medium-term resource problem is oil. Optimists think the
peak of world oil production may be 15 years away, while the
pessimists think it was in 2000. We should be planning for the
post-petroleum age, as forward-looking oil companies are.

Humans now use about half the world's available fresh water
directly or indirectly, but 1.2 billion people do not have clean
drinking water. Our forests, our fisheries, our agricultural soils
and our grazing lands have not been used sustainably. We have to
reduce resource use so we are using the income of natural systems
rather than our present approach of running down the capital.

Fifty years ago, Australia was one of the world's most equal
societies. The legal framework of the basic wage set a minimum
standard, while the highest salaries were only five to 10 times
that minimum. Public education gave opportunities to bright
children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Most people used public
transport to get around, while the health system made provision on
the basis of need.

Today, however, we are one of the most unequal of all the
industrialised nations. Many households have great difficulty
affording the basic needs of food, power and clothing. Low-income
families do not have the luxury of buying educational opportunities
or privileged health care. If we continue in the reprehensible
practice of rationing life opportunities according to income, we
must develop policies that systematically reduce the inequality of
household incomes. We should also attempt to reduce global
inequality, lifting our overseas aid to the international target of
0.7 per cent of GDP and cancelling the debts of those countries for
which repayments constitute a grinding financial burden.

The scale and seriousness of environmental problems are no
longer in doubt. The second State of the Environment report,
released in 2002, noted an improvement in urban air quality but
found that all other critical environmental problems were getting
worse because the pressures on natural systems were still
increasing. Each year, Australia's population grows by about
200,000 and the material expectations of people increase. The
compounding effect of more people, all demanding more, is putting
ever-increasing pressure on natural systems.

Perhaps the most serious environmental problem is global
warming. The Earth has warmed about 0.6 degrees in the past hundred
years. Changes associated with the warming include the shrinking of
glaciers, the thinning of polar ice, rising sea levels, changing
rainfall patterns and more frequent extreme events such as droughts
and severe storms.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the most
optimistic view is that the temperature this century will increase
by a further 1.4 degrees. That assumes we will rapidly phase out
fossil fuels and hopes scientific uncertainties will work in our
favour. More realistic assumptions about fuel use lead to estimated
temperature increases between two and 4.5 degrees, while the
extreme inaction advocated by some could cause increases as large
as six degrees.

We need a concerted global response to climate change, setting a
target of reducing fossil fuel use, say to 30 per cent of present
levels, by 2050. Cutting our emissions is our obligation to the
world. We need to systematically phase out the huge subsidies of
fossil fuel supply and use, transferring those public funds to the
expansion of renewable energy supply technologies and efficiency
gains.

Moving to a sustainable future will require fundamental changes
to our values and social institutions. Fortunately, human systems
can change radically almost overnight. The serious obstacle is the
dominant mind-set of decision-makers who don't recognise the
problem, or see the possible solutions as threatening their
short-term interests.

Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe has just been elected president
of the Australian Conservation Foundation.